What are the various Filipino unarmed fighting methods and what do you all know about them?

edited for spelling

Edited by MattJ (04/19/0608:51 PM)

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Member of DaJoGen MMA school under Dave Hagen and Team Chaos fight team under Denver Mangiyatan and Chris Toquero, ran out of Zanshin Martial Arts in Salem Oregon: http://www.zanshinarts.org/Home.aspx,

Many of the Filipino arts involve weapons, but there are some that don't. I know of Dumog (Filipino art of wrestling) Sikaran and Pananjakman (Filipino kicking arts) and Panantukan (Filipino boxing art) and Yaw-Yan (Filipino kickboxing).

Most of the Filippino empty hands from the direct translation of weapon movements.In the southern part of philippines(Mindanao) there are some silat styles ,which teaches the empty hands first.

Yaw-Yan is very famous in Philippines.Although it's commonly known as a kickboxing system ,there is a combat version of that art too.They define their art as arnis without sticks.They are heavily conditioned and contains a lot of unorthodox punches and kicks.If you want more information ,plz check these out

The beauty of learning FMA is that it teaches you to move and the footwork soon becomes a big part of everything that you do whilst sparring.

Many of the techniques with sticks convert nicely into open handed stuff. A good example of this is de cadena.

A lot of the time it can be very helpful teaching some of the drills open handed so that the students learn where to strike and block prior to having a weapon in their hands! I've taught single and double sinawali without sticks many times and the students who learnt that way proved to be faster in getting it right.

Someone posted a Dan Inosanto video in the JKD forum that had some great examples of the interchangability of Kali. Guro demonstrates how, for example, an elbow strike or hammer fist can easily take the place of a strike with the knife. I am also constantly reminded by my own Guro that when fighting with a knife, it is best to still think of the hand that holds it as a fist, otherwise your concentration is too distracted by your weapon and you forget about your other hand and legs a little. The thing I love about Kali is that much of it can be figured out just by experimenting. IE, do some knife drills, drop the knife and ask yourself "hmm, how would this work unarmed?" It makes for some incredible defenses and counter attacks.